Welcome to our weekly summary of what's happened in social media this week. We highlight the top stories to help you stay up to date with social media, here is what caught our attention this week.
Twitter announced back in September that they would be expanding beyond its 140-character limit. This was finally rolled out to all user this week. This will be for select languages, including English, Spanish, Portuguese, and French, to allow users to share their thoughts without running out of room in the tweet. They will be testing this feature out on a small group of verified accounts, to begin with.
Their reasoning for expanding the character count was because, for those tweeting in some languages such as Japanese, Korean or Chinese, they require fewer characters than tweets in English or Spanish.
Twitter believes that when people have more characters they are more likely to tweet. But since the launch of Twitter, we have all kept within the 140 character limit and got our point across. For many, it is what makes Twitter so unique, taking away it's short and snappy Tweets it will become a lot like other social platforms. We have seen mixed (and funny) reviews of the change. Find what users think of the update.
Snapchat is on a losing streak as their Q3 2017 earnings were released this week.In Q3 they added just 4.5 million users and earned $207.9 million in revenue. they have a total of 178 million daily users which is a 2.9% quarter-over-quarter user growth rate, its lowest yet. Snapchat reported that in order to bring themselves back on top they will be making some changes to secure their future such as:
Instagram is moving forward with the rollout of its branded content tool, which allows influencers and other popular users to identify posts that are paid for by advertisers. instagram started to introduce this tool in June and made it a requirement in August that all branded content be published using the tool. The tool creates a standardized format where posts are identified at the top as a 'paid partnership with' and they can tag whichever brand it is. Instagram says it’s making the tool available to all accounts that have access to its Insights data.
Instagram says the purpose of the feature is:
We recently tested new tools to bring transparency and consistency to Branded Content on Instagram. The tools consist of a tag to help creators disclose when a post is the result of a partnership and insights to help businesses access the performance of their branded content campaigns. Ultimately, these tools bring transparency around Branded Content to the Instagram community.
you may have come across the discussion on Twitter regarding the burger emoji and where the order by which the ingredients should be placed. This tweet was sent out...
and Googles CEO replied...
This sparked a conversation among many Twitter users stating the 'proper' way to enjoy a hamburger. Emojipedia shared the different variations of burger emojis...
Snapchat joined the great burger debate with the launch of their very own dancing burger AR lens...
Snap either wasn't paying attention or has perfected the art of the troll... pic.twitter.com/qlb4maB1W9
— Jordan Crook (@jordanrcrook) November 2, 2017
Is this Snapchats effort to jump on the burger bandwagon or just a crazy coincidence. Emojipedia wanted to settle the argument once and for all, by taking a poll.
It seems that the majority preferred the following order from top-to-bottom:
Question is, how do you like your burger?
For many, it would have been a sign of relief but for one employee it was their last their last day on the job and decided to deactivate Trumps Twitter account. The account was down for 11 minutes. Trump brushed off the outage in a tweet, suggesting it showed the impact he was having.
Trump's Twitter account has had numerous complaints made about it, accusing him violating Twitter’s terms of service.
Facebook’s Q3 2017 earnings were released this week. Facebook announced that Instagram Stories and WhatsApp Status have reached 300 million daily active users, which is up from 250 million for Instagram in June 2017 and for WhatsApp in July 2017. TechCrunch reported that this number represents double Snapchat’s reported daily active users and after Snapchats, Q3 earning being released its not looking good for Snapchats future.
Facebook released this statement with their report:
"Our community continues to grow and our business is doing well," said Mark Zuckerberg, Facebook founder and CEO. "But none of that matters if our services are used in ways that don't bring people closer together. We're serious about preventing abuse on our platforms. We're investing so much in security that it will impact our profitability. Protecting our community is more important than maximizing our profits."
Don't forget to connect with us on Twitter, Facebook, Instagram or LinkedIn and join us next week for another weekly roundup.
By Jessica Wade
I was previously the Social Media Executive for Smart Insights and managed all of Smart Insights social media channels and social strategy. I love all things social, most of the time you will find me endlessly scrolling through Instagram. You can follow me on Twitter or connect on LinkedIn.
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